Throughout human history, we’ve always been fond of finding faster, better, and more economical ways to get work done. From the invention of the printing press to the use of mass production methods, we’re constantly improving. Today, AI is providing yet another way to supercharge our abilities, most notably in the digital marketing arena. Thanks to the proliferation of AI tools, marketers now can open doors and connect with untapped audiences.
How transformative is AI poised to be for digital marketing professionals? McKinsey and Company explains that AI’s automation power alone is set to standardize and streamline around 30% of most business’ core processes by 2030. And that isn’t all that AI can do. With generative AI solutions like ChatGPT becoming increasingly accurate and accessible, AI’s potential to revolutionize the way digital marketers work is truly vast.
If this excites you as an executive leader or marketing expert, you’re not alone. Marketing has become a highly competitive (and complex) ecosystem. Amid the noise of the online realm, it’s harder to stand out. But with clever and thoughtful use of AI, you can get noticed faster. Better yet, with AI’s help, you can identify and attract new audience pipelines, helping you expand your branding and sales footprint.
To begin your efforts to uncover audiences you’ve never explored (or considered) with assistance from AI, try these strategies. They’ll enable you to get a leg up on your competition by growing and diversifying your customer base.
1. Use customer data to predict future audiences
The data you’ve obtained from your current customers has more heft than meets the eye. You just have to look deeply enough to find connections, anomalies, and other points of interest. The only issue? It would be difficult for your team to sift through countless data points to spot trends. No worries, though: AI programs can tackle that task with ease. And as the AI programs analyze your data, they can alert you to customer trends. Those trends can then be leveraged to predict and design future customer segments.
Advertising technology platform Nativo outlines how this type of predictive technology works. Say you want to discover which of your current customers is statistically likely to buy something next week. AI systems can parse your historical data to determine who those customers will be based on past behaviors and attributes like their lifecycle stage or affinity toward discounts. From there, the system can create predictive audiences. With predictive audience information in hand, you can start tweaking your advertising to appeal to new groups. At the same time, you can know exactly when to send out marketing notifications to each customer segment to maximize their chance of buying again.
Though you’ll have a learning curve, the first time you use a tool with predictive capabilities, you’ll get more comfortable with the process. And as you run scenarios and experiment with marketing campaigns, you may just find that it becomes your favorite go-to method to open up new prospect pools.
2. Give your marketing content the personal touch
Customization is in demand from consumers, whether you’re targeting them as B2B or B2C audiences. People want to feel as if the messaging they’re seeing from brands is designed specifically for them. Though it would be impossible to personalize all your outbound marketing collateral by hand, you can make it happen with AI software.
For example, maybe you’ve pinpointed a new audience you’d like to reach with a constant drip of emails. Instead of sending the same email to each prospect, you can generate individualized emails that speak to the receiver on a one-to-one level. Research from email conversion software provider GoCustomer suggests that email personalization can lead to a 30% rise in click-throughs and a 25% increase in opens. The benefits of personalization don’t end there, though. You’ll also be building the foundation for a deeper brand-buyer bond.
You don’t have to limit your personal touch to emails, of course. AI can help drive personalization at scale across many of your marketing moves. These can include personalized web pages as well as tailored product pages and recommendations.
3. Allow AI to repurpose your existing content for new audiences
Every audience is motivated by something a little different. Rather than reworking your content by hand to find out what will move a group of prospective buyers, let generative AI do the heavy lifting. Just feed your existing content into a generative AI tool and then create a prompt. The tool can rapidly make content modifications based on your prompt request.
This doesn’t mean that you should trust generative AI to write your new content for you without giving it a once-over. Every piece of content that your marketing group publishes needs to be filtered through a human lens. However, there’s nothing wrong with leveraging AI to suggest ways to give your content a fresh tone.
Remember that you may not even need to change the core content of your awareness stage pieces. Simply modifying a piece of content’s headline or subject line based on AI suggestions can be enough. Revising your meta descriptions can help your information be found by searchers, too. AI generator solutions company Hypotenuse AI points out that a better meta description can mean better engagement metrics. After all, metas are important elements of SEO success. But you won’t have to waste employee hours muddling through metas. Just let AI do all the hard work.
No matter how well-known your business becomes, you always will have new audiences you want to attract and nurture. With AI, you’ll have a less challenging time identifying who they are and then getting them to take action — and hopefully become long-time loyal customers.
